


the contraction of a universe

by halfwheeze



Series: the sad boys club universe [2]
Category: Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Trans!Adam, basically infinitesimal but like shorter and from addy's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 19:26:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14063859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: If you change the camera angle, the story starts when Adam is five years old, and he is just deciding to be called Adam.





	the contraction of a universe

**Author's Note:**

> This is just infinitesimal in Adam's point of view. 
> 
> Welcome to part two! I hope you enjoy!

He's five years old when he picks out his own name, brand new and different, different from any other kid he's ever met. He's know he was a boy for a long time, though he can't help but think that it isn't always like that for other people like him. There have to be other people like him, because his mom says he's never alone. His mom helps him pick out his new name and he's five, and he's Adam, he's brand new Adam, he's Adam James Bianchi. Adam is his name. He enters kindergarten as Adam James Bianchi, and he’ll be that for the rest of his life, if no one wants to change the last bit of it.

The other kids whole know him as Adam, and don't avoid him because of what's different about that, but rather because of what's different about his personality at large. Adam, for the record, had always known he was stranger than being a boy who looks like a girl, but it's still a little strange to the adults in his life that he's so settled in being alone, especially at his age. Adam isn't sure what his age has to do with it, but that's the emphasis he overhears when his mom is in the meeting with his first grade teacher, a year after he starts school.

Anyway, kids his own age respect his name and his pronouns and really everything about him, but there is a layer of distance, of cognitive dissonance between respect and friendship. While the kids know his pronouns and his name matter more to him that anything else, the teachers cannot be trusted so thoroughly; while the students call him Adam and send him to sit with the boys during gym class and make no mistakes about who he is, there is one teacher slip up. A teacher only slips and calls him she once, and that’s not because Adam throws a fit or tells his mom or anything. It’s because he looks up at her, six and calm as a day, and he says, “He/him, thank you.” and nothing else.

He migrates his way through grades riding on the fact that silence gets him much more information than it ever gives anyone. As his male classmates get deeper voices, Adam doesn't, though his voice doesn't mature in a feminine way either; he's put on blockers in the summer between sixth and seventh grade, effectively putting a stop to the budding of his chest and the maturity leaking into his voice. He knows the blockers are a mitigation effort from his mother to ease the shift between schools, but Adam didn't really mind switching anyway. It's not like he had any friends.

He meets Andrew and Steven as soon as he switches into the new school system and school starts, and he's not afraid to admit that he fell a little in love with having friends. They're all consuming and entirely distracting, and he forgets the effort of being trans around them, forgets that some people won't recognise him as a boy no matter how loud he screams it or how silent he tries to be for them, and Andrew and Steven make being around easier. He meets them just after he starts the blockers, when he still needs to wear a binder, and he may or mayn't stay with them because they never ask, never look at him like he's any less for it, never ask about the pads and liners in his bag. It chokes him up and he wouldn't know how to explain if someone paid him.

Adam works hard on knowing himself, but getting to know his new boys is also fun, some of the most fun he's ever had. He learns that Steven doesn't know how to talk to kids their age in the same month that he discovers that he never really wants the bottom surgery. He learns that Andrew has trouble with adults during the week he figures out that he’ll get the top surgery one day, even though he was put on blockers before his chest got very big, even as he needs it less than most trans boys his age. He doesn’t buy packers or search around for some way to feel like a man in that way, because it’s not something he needs.

Instead of doing the things he's heard of other trans boys doing screwing around on the internet, Adam looks up how long on T he needs to be to start growing facial hair, how long it’ll take for his hair to grow courser and curl. He thinks about when Andrew and Steven will start growing facial hair, and is pleased in equal turns by the patchiness of Andrew's and the nonexistence of Steven's. Adam starts T at fourteen and watches his own hair every day, until he’s months in and his beard comes in thicker than Andrew’s little bit of facial hair, and he’s elated, validated, not wanting.

When high school comes in like the crashing tide, Adam dates a couple of boys and girls and nonbinary people in freshman and sophomore year, trying to find out what he likes without anyone getting hurt. He doesn't wholeheartedly like the idea of commitment, because he thinks that someone will make him give up Andrew and Steven and their body closeness, if not their emotional closeness, and he can't allow either of those things. He doesn't like dating much anyway. Boys say things that sting but girls not saying things is worse and the nonbinary people Adam dates think he’s like them, but he’s not, he’s a man and somehow that’s worse. He stops serial dating and settles into singleness halfway through sophomore year.

Junior year is a dumpster fire nearly so soon as it begins. He and Steven talk about the lovely fascination they have with one another, not avoiding the crush they share on Andrew, and they start dating. In junior year, he takes pride in giving Steven beard burn when they kiss, enough that he can see it in class later as they sit across from each other and pretend to pay attention to the teacher. Steven likes the beard burn too, he tells Adam that he likes the reminder of where he's been, of who has been on him and what they've done together. Adam pretends he doesn't get a lump in his throat.

Steven cups his face like he’s everything he’s ever wanted him and calls him my man, my boyfriend, my guy, my mans more than once, and says it like he’s proud. It’s validating in a way Adam didn’t know he would love from a relationship with his best friend. He tries to pretend that he doesn't want Andrew to fill the holes left in their relationship, holes that are there because they left them for when Andrew was ready. Instead of readying himself and coming home to them, Andrew pulls away, and it cracks Adam apart more than he would like to say.

There's a fight that Steven gives Adam a vivid description of, a breakdown that somehow leaves Andrew avoiding them impossibly more, and radio silence for a week. Adam just wants his best friend back, even if Andrew doesn't need them or want them close or want them at all. Adam needs closure at the very least, and he's never going to get it if Andrew can't even look him in the eye. There's a confrontation on a back road on the farming side of town, a trainwreck of its very own description, but Adam comes out of it holding Andrew's hand in his own and Steven's heart in his chest, so he figures he'll be fine. He feels fine again, finally.

In second semester of junior year, Andrew likes the beard burn too. He holds Adam's hands and smiles with that bright smile of his and looks like Adam like he built the sun and sky in his toolshed, or maybe like he drew it in MS Paint, but he looks at Adam like he's everything. He calls Adam handsome, calls him pretty in equal turn, and where that would usually make Adam feel a little squicky, it sounds like honor from Andrew, sounds like he means it like fine china rather than like woman, and Adam doesn’t mind so much in being pretty. Andrew helps him reclaim an entire word, and he doesn’t even know.

Senior year is conquering. It's taking what is already broken and making something of it with the bleached bones, it's easy and fun and feels like running down a hill at top speed while holding the hands of two people who love him. He checks male on all of his college applications and follows Andrew and Steven wherever they're going, because they're the light of his life. He's willing to admit that he loves them like burning and he'd never want to be anywhere else. A year in a committed relationship has him hazy and loved, and he wouldn't change it for a moment.

His first apartment is covered in chemistry notes and white boards and old copies of Austen and Conrad that smell like dust, and that is the place where Adam feels like he's on his own two feet. He helps Andrew cook dinner, he helps Steven keep track of the schedule, and he's settled down at 19 years old with nothing but hope and two boys who love him for the man he is, who never doubted him for a fucking second and he's never doubted them in his life.

It's worth it every moment and he'd never fucking give it up.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a prompt @halfwheeze on tumblr, and I'll get to it when I can!


End file.
